


How Twitter Helped Win Christmas

by FrozenDonkeyWheel



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: @buttlinski, AU - Human, Christmas, Cute, Derek seeks Lydia's help, Derek wants to highlight Stiles' self-worth, Lydia teaches social media to Derek, M/M, Twitter, candid shots, gang celebrates Christmas together, hopelessly in love, mention of kitten, painting of Derek, sterek, these tags are sort of ridiculous, well some of them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-21
Updated: 2014-05-21
Packaged: 2018-01-26 00:22:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1667900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrozenDonkeyWheel/pseuds/FrozenDonkeyWheel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every single year Stiles wins Christmas with his ridiculously adorable choice of gifts. But this year, Derek's determined to emerge victorious. He has no idea how he's going to beat him, or if he even can, but when the idea of creating a Twitter account dedicated to him springs to mind, he knows he finally has a fighting chance. </p><p>If only he knew a damn thing about social media...</p><p>(This fic is an addendum to my previous work titled "Lost Kitten" and is also a response to a request made by a commenter.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Twitter Helped Win Christmas

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this is my second published fic on this site and one whose word count didn't completely run away with itself like the previous. It's also my second solo Sterek fic and definitely not the last, though my intention is to work with other characters for my next work *cough* Lydia *cough*.
> 
> Also, as before, any feedback you guys can provide in regards to anything you read here would be greatly appreciated. I never know if I'm writing something of any value or something that should ideally be cast aside into the trash can, so help meeee. 
> 
> Finally, because this was born out of a sort-of fic request made by somebody: if anyone else has any requests of their own I would absolutely love to hear them!

One thing. 

That’s all he needs--one thing. Signed, sealed, delivered, just like Stevie Wonder would sing. One single, damn thing. But if there’s one continental difference between Derek and Stiles, it’s that no matter how hard he tries, Derek always comes in second place in what’s come to be known as the Battle of Christmas--a yearly contest where one side comes armed with elaborate love poems written in exquisite cursive and bound like ancient scrolls, while the other comes with Batman socks. 

But this year’s different. Derek needs--no, wants--to give Stiles the Christmas gift to end all Christmas gifts. He wants to find the fucking holy grail of festive commercialist crap, wrap it in a neat little bow, and then watch as it fills Stiles’ eyes with gleaming joy on Christmas morning. After all, it was only a few months ago that their sky turned black and threatened to start drowning them, so he’s making it his mission to finally go to war with Stiles and emerge victorious. 

If only he could find the right damn thing. 

And it’s getting pretty late, too, what with Christmas being only a week away. His options and chances of success get slimmer by the day. He had originally thought arranging a trip back to Beacon Hills to reassemble the Avengers, as it were, would be the insurmountable gift he needed. But then Scott, in all his ‘I suck at timing and also everything else’ glory decided to take his own personal vacation with Kira to a cabin at some lake in the freezing-cold countryside, so that idea turned to dust between his fingers as quickly as it had gathered. 

So now here he is, lying in bed at 1 A.M. with the laptop providing him with scant heat in the middle of the bitterly cold night, Stiles lying next to him fast asleep with his lips pursed together against the pillow like he’s trying to kiss it. _Cute asshole_.

Derek spends roughly twenty minutes browsing Amazon and finds nothing. So he switches to Forbidden Planet, sees a fantastic statuette of Oliver Queen and figures that would be perfect because Stiles is an enormous fan. But it’s out of stock. Everything’s out of stock, because nobody is dumb enough to leave it this late, he realizes. 

At some point, after what must be, like, three hours of groggily switching from one website to the next, groaning and sighing when something appears in front of him before slapping him in the face and running away, Derek forces himself to stop, take a bathroom break, and somehow get back into bed without waking Stiles up from what must evidently be one hell of an exciting dream if the little moans and squeals are any indication. 

The next time Derek looks at the time in the taskbar, he whispers “holy fuck” to himself when he realizes he’s been searching for five hours and it’s now 6 A.M. And he’s gotten nowhere. Absolutely nowhere. Well no, that’s not entirely true; in the thirty-minute interim he spent between coming back from the bathroom and finding the next site to peruse, he found an _amazing_ new porn site to frequent in the future. 

It’s a pity he can’t wrap that up and leave it underneath the tree. That would literally blow Stiles away. 

So that’s it, he thinks as he lies flat, his vision clouded in darkness, the only audible sounds in the vicinity that of the laptop fans whirring to silence, and Stiles as he enjoys his dream. Time’s caught up to him and now he has no chance of beating Stiles again this year--the year in which it’s the most important. Things have been good since what happened between them, yeah, and heck, Derek and their kitten, Mister Kittypants, have even started to bond. But Derek really wants to _show_ Stiles just how much he means to him. 

Annoyed with himself, Derek rolls over in bed and faces the opposite wall, electing to at least salvage an hour of sleep before he has to get up. But before he closes his eyes, he sees light illuminating the room from behind him. He rolls back over and sees Stiles’ phone screen as the source. Probably an incoming Snapchat, Derek thinks, then decides not to flip himself back over but instead sleep face-to-face with Stiles, close enough that he can feel Stiles’ air rushing out of his nose and warming his face in labored gusts.

He stares at Stiles for a moment, still as a statue. Just a moment, because it’s rare he keeps still long enough for Derek to simply observe him in all his beauty, to strip away all of the sarcasm and the spaziness and just _look_ at him. Everything that Derek fell in love with is lying right there in front of him, and tired he may be but it’s in these moments where he feels like the luckiest guy on the goddamn planet. 

But the saddest thing of all? Stiles doesn’t believe any of it himself. That’s why he thought Derek was leaving him all those months ago, because he was physically inferior, when in reality Derek is envious of _him_. He may have the abs and the chest and whatever, and yeah he’s pretty proud of that, but there’s a natural beauty to Stiles that’s like looking at an old tree. 

And then the idea hits him out of nowhere, causing him to sit up just slightly:

A Twitter account. 

Would that work, though? It sounds pretty stupid. But what if it isn’t? What if this is exactly what he’s looking for?

His eyes dart from one plot of darkness to the next as he runs the idea through his neural web. Stiles does the exact same thing for him, letting the internet bow down at the altar of his ass, and it makes him feel amazing when he does his nightly read-through of all the tweets and comments. And if he could do that for Stiles, show him that he’s not the only one who loves him the way he is…

Holy shit, this is a brilliant idea, he finally thinks to himself as he lies back down after thinking intensely about it. He’s told Stiles so many times that he thinks he’s attractive in a different way, and he knows he never believes it, but showing him that would literally be the best present Derek could give him. 

So he knows nothing about social media, or how these things work in general, but Google exists to help with that and it can’t be that hard, right? He smiles to himself, glad that he won’t have to feel judged while browsing the novelty underwear section, and slips his arm underneath his head as he finally closes his eyes and feels himself drifting off into bliss. 

~~~

December 20th. Five days ‘til Christmas. And Derek’s nervous, real nervous, because it’s just not working. He created the Twitter account three days ago, deliberated for ages on what to call it before settling on @buttlinski. And it’d taken multiple attempts to snap a shot of Stiles without him noticing. (He caught him out when he tried the first time, and boy was his face the picture of suspicion, but Derek wormed his way out of it by pretending he needed ‘material’ for when Stiles wasn’t there.) But he finally captured a semi-grainy-but-fully-visible shot of Stiles’ ass while he was in the shower, all perky and dripping with water and lather, and uploaded it instantly, presuming an immediate response. 

But there hasn’t been a response. At all. No followers, mentions, retweets, anything. He did get a follower a few hours ago but it was a spam account advertising the health benefits of some strange wild berry. And with only five days left until he needs to show Stiles that the world appreciates him as much as he does, he’s desperate and willing to go to any lengths necessary to avoid having this be a monumental disaster.

Which is why he’s standing outside of Lydia’s front door, his teeth chattering in the wintry winds blowing an icy kiss on his face, having been forced to ask for her help in building a brand and getting his message out there, because nobody understands how to dominate the social media-sphere quite like Lydia Martin. 

He hesitates for a second then knocks on the door, and within thirty seconds Lydia opens it, her flame hair falling down either side of her face with almost perfect symmetry. She’s wearing an aqua-blue t-shirt with red flowers running around the collar and arms, and the skirt she’s wearing ends just above her knees, delicately swaying with every movement, as fluid as water. In all, she looks expectedly flawless, albeit severely underdressed for the time of year. 

“Earth to Derek,” she says, waving her hands in front of his face, bringing him out of his temporary daydream.

He clears his throat of nothing, composes himself. “Sorry, I was just...god, you look amazing.” He smiles at her, looks her up and down. “How do you do this?”

“You’d never understand even if I told you.” She steps to the side, beckons him inside with her arm. “Well come in, then. I'd prefer not to freeze to death before we get started on whatever it is you want.”

Derek steps inside, immediately finds his way to Lydia’s front room because he did spend three nights sleeping there after all. He sits himself down in the chair directly adjacent to the Christmas tree that’s exquisitely decorated with red ornaments with occasional outbursts of purple and silver.

In fact, the whole room is laced with red and purple; Christmas lights are hung from one corner of the room to the next, a competition of colors furiously competing against each other along a circuitous race track; there’s a transparent bowl filled with purple and red baubles sitting in the center of the coffee table that Derek makes a mental note of to replicate later that evening; and there are candles dotted around the room, burning and filling the air with the scent of pine and cinnamon and even a hint of blackberries. 

Derek is taken aback by how impressive Lydia’s eye for design is. 

He wraps his arms around himself to cease the shivering, all the while dreading having to explain to Lydia just what it is he needs her help with. He was vague with her on the phone for a reason, because needing advice on how to best objectify your boyfriend to internet strangers isn’t exactly a conversation he’s excited about.

Suddenly he hears a noise from the kitchen, looks up and sees Allison shuffling into the room looking like she’s just crawled out of bed, her hair all frazzled and her pyjamas draping over her frame. She stops in her tracks when she spots him, puzzlement painted across her face. “Derek?” she asks, studying him quizzically. 

_The universe hates me. Everything hates me_. 

He doesn’t know what to say in response, so instead he opts for a little wave accompanied by a tight-lipped smile. And god, the awkwardness surrounding them is thick enough to smother them right there on the spot. 

She studies him for a second longer then takes a seat on one of the chairs, her legs folded underneath her. “Are you just visiting or?”

“No. Well yeah, but...I’m...here for advice.”

“Oh.” She looks at him a little seriously now. “Everything’s all right, I hope?”

Derek’s mouth is literally half-open ready to respond before Lydia comes back into the room carrying her laptop underneath her arm as though she just knows. She sets it down on the table in front of them and sits beside Derek on the sofa, one leg crossed over the other, her hands folded inside each other, her head tilted just slightly to catch his face. “The answer’s no.”

“What?” he asks her, genuinely wondering if she’s just guessed exactly what he’s there for by reading his body language or something. With Lydia Martin, you can never quite tell. 

He sees her roll her eyes for a second, sigh, then look guilty, perhaps? “You’ve fallen out with Stiles again and you need a place to stay, right? Well you can’t. Allison’s staying and she needs the spare room, and I had to fumigate the sofa last time so you can forget about that.”

“Last time?” Allison interjects. 

Lydia twists her head back to look at her. “Oh yeah, there was a thing. Don’t worry, I’ll tell you about it later.”

“I’d prefer it if you didn’t,” Derek says, wishing not to have his and Stiles’ dirty laundry gossiped about. “And I’m not here for your sofa but it’s really nice to know you have friends you can rely on. Thanks.”

“Sarcasm is Stiles’ thing, Derek, not yours.” Free from the apparent troubles of having to tell him to get lost if he wanted a place to stay, she looks at him with her brow just slightly curved inwards. “So what do you want? You said you needed something on the phone?”

Derek shuffles nervously in his seat, really wishing he hadn’t bothered with this whole stupid thing and just bought Stiles something dumb again. At least the aggravation from it would’ve been zero percent. But he does need her help, so painful as it may be, he blurts it all out. What he wants to do, what’s he trying to do, how he’s supposed to build a presence for himself on the web, what he needs her advice on. And she listens intently, occasionally stifling a laugh, Derek notices, and Allison’s listening too, her chin resting on her wrist to cover her mouth, but even then Derek can still tell she’s finding it amusing. 

When he’s finished, nobody speaks. Derek looks at Lydia, who’s looking at him as though she’s waiting for the punchline, and when he looks over at Allison, she looks like she’s on the precipice of a laughter breakdown. What a fucking waste of time this was, he thinks to himself as he considers getting up and leaving before he makes the embarrassment even more interminable. 

Finally, Lydia speaks. “Oh, you’re serious?”

“No, I just thought it would be great fun to come here and humiliate myself.” He rolls his eyes, his words superfluous when his deadpan face is saying everything he wants to say. “Of course I’m serious. So can you help or not?”

She stares at him for a moment, then shakes her head just slightly. “So let me get this straight: you want to create a Twitter profile to post nude pictures of your boyfriend--”

“Not just nudes.”

“Whatever. And you want me to help you with it?” She shrugs. “Is that right?”

“Pretty much.”

Lydia rolls her eyes with the tiniest of movements but just enough to be perceptible. She reaches over and lifts the laptop off the table, brings it to her knees. “One day you guys will have a normal relationship. Hopefully.”

The next few hours are spent discussing building a presence on twitter, creating a ‘brand’ and marketing it to the right types of people in order to engender the necessary response. Everything has to be right, Lydia says. They need to ‘hashtag’ and use 'hotwords' in tweets and be consistent with tone, and a whole other bunch of stuff that makes taking pictures of butts and writing accompanying witty messages a lot more technical than Derek ever imagined it to be. 

At some point he shows Lydia the account he created, with its blank-white background, “simply average semi-pornographic tweets,” and she visibly expresses her disappointment, assumes temporary control over it, showing him step-by-step everything he needs to do in order to capture the audience he’s seeking. 

She even creates a Tumblr profile for him for ‘brand expansion’ purposes, and honestly, Derek feels like a deer trapped in the headlights of an oncoming truck. And Lydia must recognise the confusion splashed across his face at one point. 

“Are you listening?” she asks, staring up at him, her left hand accepting a coffee from Allison, who’s now dressed, and her right hand scribbling notes down onto a piece of paper. “It’s important you learn this. If you reblog a picture of a kitten when your blog’s all about male pornography then you’ll be a laughing stock, Derek, and I refuse to accept liability for that.”

“What’s reblogging again?” he asks, a wry grin emerging on his lips. Her face spots his mocking and goes back to the screen. “How do you know so much about this anyway?” he questions. 

“Because it’s 2014. What period is it for you?”

Allison sniggers before falling back into the chair she was originally seated in. She fiddles with her phone for a few minutes then asks “does Stiles know you’re doing this?”

Derek shifts uncomfortably in place, because he explained everything he wanted help with earlier but he sorta left out the part where he mentioned this was his grand Christmas gesture. 

“He doesn’t,” he replies, quieter than usual. 

“Doesn’t what?”

“Know. He doesn’t know.”

Allison’s mouth opens with surprise. “You haven’t _told_ him you’re making him an internet celebrity?!”

“It’s totally a Christmas present,” Lydia interjects without looking up from the laptop, her gaze furiously concentrated on the task at hand. 

“How--”

“It’s obvious. It’s a few days away and nobody would normally be this worried about posting nudes on the internet.” She types something out quickly, then resumes. “Plus I know you’re awful at buying gifts.”

“Well I think it’s a...different...idea,” Allison states, making Derek feel a little pleased with himself. 

“ _Thank you_ ,” he accepts, flashing a cursory smile in her direction, just pleased that someone else recognizes his creativity. 

“God, Allison, we really need to find you something to play with,” Lydia interrupts, finally finishing typing whatever she’s working on, sitting upright just as a cushion gets thrown at the side of her head from Allison’s direction. Derek can’t help but laugh under his breath when he watches it bounce off of her and leave one side of her hair hilariously tousled when contrasted with the elegance of the other. But Lydia, ever the master of poise, smiles and ignores it before getting up to grab a drink from the fridge then returning to the laptop. 

Another hour or so passes until Lydia finally hands Derek several sheets of paper full of what appear to be rules and instructions, before she tells him that @buttlinksi, both the Twitter and the brand, are “fully active and showing signs of responsivity,” even going so far as to show him that a sample tweet she made with a picture taken from Derek’s phone has gotten four favorites in the hour since she posted it. 

He takes the sheets of paper, stuffs them inside his pockets, then observes as Lydia shuts the laptop lid and leans back, sipping from a glass of wine, looking pleased with herself. “So if I just follow these instructions I’ll be good?” he asks.

“Yes. To the letter.”

“What if it doesn’t work?”

She stares at him, one eyebrow raised, and he knows the answer to that question. 

“Do you wanna stay for dinner or something?” Allison asks, thankfully breaking Lydia’s hard gaze. 

Honestly, as much as Derek’s pleased with what they’ve accomplished and how it’s been weirdly fun being in this sort of environment again, the last thing he wants to do is stay for dinner. Literally the absolute last thing. 

Thankfully he doesn’t have to make a half-hearted lie. 

“Wait, you think _I’m_ cooking? Oh no, we’re going out tonight, Allison. Just you and me.” She flicks her hand back in Derek’s direction. “No boys.”

Derek starts to stand up, collecting his jacket from the back of the sofa and tightly wrapping it around his soon-to-be-frostbitten body and prepares to venture back out. “That’s fine, I couldn’t have stayed anyway.”

Allison and Lydia both see him standing and they, too, do the same. Allison even hugs him for a few seconds. “This was...weird. But it was fun. We should do it again.”

“Yeah, maybe,” he replies when they finally separate. Secretly he likes the idea. 

And now Lydia’s hugging him, which is simultaneously the weirdest and most unexpected thing ever, but in typical Lydia Martin fashion it lasts but for a few seconds before she pulls away, composing herself. “You know, Allison’s staying over Christmas. You and Stiles could...I don’t know...stay. If you like.”

Derek thinks about it for a second, but only a second before he agrees because he knows Lydia’s just awarded him the second-best Christmas gift to give to Stiles. 

His phone bleeps just as he’s about to open the front door. He checks it and discovers @buttlinski has two new followers, both of whom have left responses to the Lydia-created tweet indicating that they’ve probably downloaded the picture and added it to their ‘personal collection’. _Thirsty bitches_. 

He drops his phone back into his pocket, pulls the gloves over his hands, adjusts his red-and-black striped scarf so it’s adequately covering his neck, and steps back out into the blisteringly cold winds, warmed with anticipation. 

~~~

In a mere four days, @buttlinski has grown exponentially as Derek has continued to follow Lydia’s instructions right down to the syllable. It’s gotten 851 followers as of right now and growing, as well as favorites and retweets through the roof. As for the Tumblr profile, Derek’s followed Stiles’ lead by taking one of his favorite shows and creating a unique tag out of it that people are steadily using--#TheBigButtTheory.

It’s finally working. 

Derek rolls over onto his side and pulls the blanket right up to his chin. It’s warm, yes, but the cold leather of Lydia’s sofa is counteracting his body heat. And it’s not comfortable. At all. It wasn’t when he had to endure it the first time and it somehow seems even worse now. 

It’s so uncomfortable that he stands up in the dark, the only morsel of light emanating from the clock on the microwave (00:02--officially Christmas Day), and carefully lies himself down on the makeshift mattress constructed out of blankets and cushions that Stiles is sleeping on top of on the floor. 

He gathers up three or four blankets, wraps them tightly around his body then inches himself closer to Stiles, their bodies sharing enough heat to melt glass back into sand. He tries hard not to wake him up, but Stiles shuffles himself into a facing position with Derek and stares at him, a cute smile just visible in the infinitesimal light. 

“Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you,” Derek whispers, gently fluffing a cushion underneath his head with one of his arms. 

“You okay? Can you not sleep?” Stiles responds, a trace of grogginess audible in every word, but still mellifluous to Derek’s ears. 

“That fucking sofa’s like sleeping on the pavement.” Derek snuggles even closer to Stiles, slowly pulls his arm out from underneath the blanket and touches Stiles’ face softly, running the upside of his index finger down his cheek, his skin absorbing Stiles’ glow. “I’d rather wake up on the floor with you.”

“What...what time is it? Is it morning yet?” Stiles asks, yawning simultaneously, when Derek takes his hand back before it solidifies in the cold.

“Such a kid." Derek giggles just slightly. "No, it’s barely midnight. Go back to sleep.”

Derek sees that smile again--the one that’s infectious--and then they’re kissing. Just slightly, but strongly. Derek wraps his hand around the back of Stiles’ neck, chatters his teeth with Stiles’, feels the stream of warm air from Stiles’ nose blowing against his face, feels their tongues caressing each other, desperate to mould together into one. They separate, Stiles breathes “Merry Christmas, you big asshole,”, then rolls over to face away from him. 

Derek edges himself against Stiles’ back, curls one arm around Stiles’ stomach, the other underneath the cushion keeping his head propped up, then nuzzles his face into his partner’s collarbone. “Merry Christmas,” he whispers back, taking just a few seconds to be pulled into the magnetism of the moment, then succombs to the curtains of sleep.

~~~

Dawn is just breaking through the tiny slit of the closed curtains, casting a thin tendril of light into the room that’s just enough to transmogrify the darkness into a colorful portrait. Derek sits up slowly as to not wake Stiles again, takes a second to observe his surroundings, then not a minute later he hears the clatter of feet against wood before Lydia and Allison both emerge from their respective bedrooms, their bed-hair looking unfairly kempt even in the light. 

A minute later, Stiles shuffles beside him, mumbles “I didn’t...want...pistachios” before Derek nudges him and he bursts back into life, one eye half-closed, his mouth drooping, one half of his hair twisted in every direction this way and that. “What...is it morning?” he says, looking around, spotting the girls kneeling beside the tree, picking up boxes and bags and inspecting the labels. 

Derek doesn’t even have to respond because Stiles is scooting up off the floor so quickly that a blanket entangles itself around his ankle and trips him up, bringing him to his knees again. The rest of the blankets covering them both are sent scurrying across the floor, letting the cold air slam down on top of Derek’s bare chest like a shockwave. 

But Derek, cold or not, can’t help but just smile as he watches Stiles--a fully grown twenty-year-old--regressing back into his ten-year-old self at the sight of glittery paper and colorful ribbons.

And then it suddenly hits Derek, as he watches Stiles pick up box after box, putting them back down when he sees the intended recipient: Stiles is gonna be upset when he realizes there’s nothing under there for him from Derek. He’ll probably think Derek’s forgotten, or doesn’t care, or something even worse.

Derek, too, forces himself up off the floor with incredible speed, brushes aside papers and magazines and Stiles’ discarded socks to find his phone. At first he can’t find it, and Derek feels a little sweaty and panicked that he’s completely fucked this one up, but then he spots it lying face-down next to Stiles’ shoe and he breathes again.

“OH, MY GOD!” Derek jumps in his seat upon the startling announcement from beside him. He sees Lydia holding what looks like tickets in her hand, waving them gleefully in front of her face, pure excitement radiating from her pores.

“What is it?” Allison questions when neither he nor Stiles decides to jump in. 

“Tickets. To London!”

“Oh, from Jackson?” Allison asks, again once when she realizes nobody else is going to. 

“Yeah. He wants me to visit him, talk about some stuff.”

“I thought you two were finished?” 

“Oh, we are. I don’t care about him. But London!” Lydia shakes the tickets again before racing off to her bedroom, fiddling with papers, it sounds like, then returning sans tickets. 

“Meanwhile…”Allison trails off, holding up a bizarre pink-and-blue scarf dotted with thorns, pure bemusement evident across her face. 

“Scott?” Stiles asks, looking up from a bag covered in pictures of cartoon-y Christmas trees, before focusing back on the task at hand. 

“Yup. How could you tell?” Allison folds the scarf back into a roll, places it on top of an _Arrow_ boxset that Derek knows Stiles bought for her. 

“Trust me, I recognize the hallmarks when I see them.”

The next half an hour or so passes by and Derek watches Stiles unwrap an album by an unknown group he--nor Stiles, if his expression is any indication--has never heard of, and also as Allison discovers a copy of _The Fault in Our Stars_ and visibly beams with joy, almost holding it to her chest like a lost puppy. 

“You’ll love it,” Stiles says while Allison’s still cradling it, smiling. “Derek cried like a baby when he read it.”

“That is not true.” It was, but he has an image to maintain, dammit. 

“Oh please. You were sensitive for a week.”

“I don’t cry at books.” 

Stiles must’ve seen the smile on Derek’s face, that if-you-shut-up-I’ll-totally-have-sex-with-you-later smile, because he’s gone silent, the tiniest indication of a smirk forming at the corner of his mouth. 

“So it’s a tearjerker. Got it,” Allison interrupts, finally letting the book go before things get weird. She leans forward, balancing on her palms, and gently plants a kiss on Stiles’ cheek. “I love it, thank you,” she says, before falling back into position and watching as everyone else resumes their unwrapping.

Derek would be half-jealous if he wasn’t both fully aware of how much Stiles appreciates what hangs between his legs, and incessantly wondering when the best moment to strike will be, his heart rattling inside his chest as the outcome of his gesture suddenly becomes an uncertainty. 

Suddenly he sees a tubular object wrapped in brown parcel paper and held together with string held up in front of him, waiting to be picked up. When he does, he sees Stiles is the one holding it, his eyes wide and pulsating with excitement, before they look down at another box that doesn’t belong to them and they change into confusion, sending a spike of guilt straight through Derek’s chest. 

He spends longer than he realizes deliberating over whether to show Stiles what he’s prepared, let him know that he hasn’t forgotten him like an asshole, or to open the package lying on his knees, winking at him with its tempting eyes. He doesn’t get long to think, though, before Stiles says “open it” from beside him, which he obeys. 

He pulls the string to the end of the roll and lets it fall away, then slowly folds the brown paper back, exposing the contents within. It looks like paper. 

He unravels it in the air, and sees that it’s a watercolor painting--a painting of him, asleep on a chair, with Mister Kittypants curled up on his lap. 

“When...how--”

“Took a picture of you while you were asleep. Hired an artist to paint it. Neat, right?” Stiles explains, and when Derek looks over he sees the face of somebody utterly and without question pleased with themselves. 

And he should be, because it’s magnificent. It’s one of his infamous love poems made visual, painted by a brush dipped into a pool of a thousand, billion words, stroked across paper in watery sentences. It is singlehandedly the most beautiful thing Derek has ever seen or been given. 

He continues observing it, feeling its colors and lines flowing through him like the rays of the Sun, before Stiles’ voice breaks his concentration. “Do you like it?” When he doesn’t respond, he speaks again. “Oh god, you don’t like it, do you? Fuck, I knew I should’ve--”

“I love you.”

Derek looks up from the painting, concentrating his eyes on Stiles’ face, his nose, his lips, every square inch of him, then he puts the painting beside him on the sofa, stands up, and drags Stiles into embrace. He doesn’t care that the girls are watching, that he’s completely unmasked. 

Because this is a moment of happiness, and some people aren’t fortunate enough to get them, so he’ll be damned if he doesn’t salvage every last morsel from it. 

When he pulls back, slowly unfolds his eyes to focus them on Stiles, he sees the face he knows he’s going to see for the rest of his life. The first and last thing. The very last thing.

And this is the moment, he realizes. 

“You’re probably wondering why there’s nothing under there from me,” Derek says, grinning, pretty sure he simultaneously looks teasing and like a douchebag. _Just how I like it_. 

“Oh, thank god.” Stiles rolls his eyes as he says it, apparently free from some invisible weight. 

“Hmm?”

“I thought you’d forgotten and then this would’ve been super awkward.”

Derek laughs. “Forget you? Not a chance.”

Stiles looks around, as though there’s some hidden object lying in plain sight. Which is true, but he’s looking in all the wrong places. “So what is it? Where is it? C’mon, dude, suspense isn’t in the Stilinski gene.”

Derek pulls his phone out of his pocket, pauses for a moment as he contemplates, for one final second, whether this is actually a good idea after all or just an enormous miscalculation. It’s too late for that, though. 

He flips it around, offers it to Stiles. 

“Your phone?” he asks, incredulous, and probably for good reason, Derek thinks. 

“Not just my phone.” He offers it closer to Stiles. “Take it. Check Twitter.”

“Dude, I already follow your twitter, I don’t need--”

“Would you just take it?” 

Stiles sighs then obliges, and while his fingers move from left to right and back again across the screen, Derek feels the pit inside his stomach growing wider and wider, like two tectonic plates moving apart. 

Then there’s just silence everywhere. Derek’s watching Stiles’ eyes closely, his pupils almost imperceptibly bouncing back and forth as he reads the text. When he looks over at Lydia and Allison, they’re both just sitting there, watching, waiting--the audience to his performance. 

“Dude…” The sound of Stiles’ voice interrupts his careening train of thought. “You took pictures of me? Without--holy shit, _in the shower_?!”

Derek can’t tell if Stiles is pleased or not. Worryingly, he sounds a little betrayed. “Not just in the shower.”

“I can see that.” His fingers continue moving up and down, stopping every now and then where his eyes then take over. Then he looks up at Derek, his brow pinched. “I can’t believe you did this.”

 _Oh, God_. “I’m sorry,” he blurts out, suddenly wishing he could reverse time to a point where he wasn’t dumb enough to believe this could ever be a good idea. 

“Sorry for what?”

“That.” He points at the phone, then tries to take it back but Stiles holds it out of his reach. Derek shrugs. “I just thought--I wanted you to see what I see. What everyone sees. What you _don’t_ see.”

Stiles stares at him for a moment longer, totally unreadable, before going back to the phone. And then he just hands it back to Derek and sits down on the sofa, leaning forward, his head resting on top of his entwined fingers. 

Derek sits down next to him, grabs one of Stiles’ hands and forces it to connect with his. “Are you upset?” he asks softly, squeezing their hands together in a way that’s meant to be comforting but feels a little too forceful to Derek’s nerves. 

Stiles shrugs then looks across at Derek, a solitary tear strolling down his face, and now Derek’s horrified at himself, until Stiles says “I don’t say this enough ‘cause I don’t speak the language, but...you are...the best thing.”

What? Derek’s a little surprised, yeah, because Stiles is _upset_. So this makes little sense. “I thought you were upset?”

Stiles sniffles his nose, runs his free sleeve across his face to dry the tears. “Are you kidding me? There are eight hundred and fifty...fifty…”

“Fifty-one.”

“Fifty-one. Eight hundred and fifty-one people--strangers--who think I’m hot stuff.” He pauses for a second. “I’m not upset because my fucking mind is _blown_ , dude.”

Derek can’t help it. He lets himself smile. Smile like that’s all he can do, from now until the end of time. He even laughs. Because this is one of those moments that people have--moments you save in your mind’s memory until your last breath. Moments that imprint on you like the stain of the dorito Stiles threw at his shirt months ago that absolutely refuses to budge. 

He’s been stained. By Stiles. Permanently. 

“You don’t think it’s stupid?” Derek asks, suddenly realizing he’s hugging Stiles in a totally normal way, for once. This certainly doesn’t happen often. Not without something proceeding it. 

“What, more stupid than me hiring a guy to paint your sorry ass?” Stiles laughs, kisses him intensely on his cheek, making Derek wish they were at home, away from prying eyes. 

_Oh shit, they’re still watching_. 

Derek looks back at Allison and Lydia while Stiles is still sucking on his skin. They’re both still sitting there, just watching, not a single pinprick of noise to be found emanating from either of them. Then he feels Stiles separate from him and also stare in the same direction, as though he, too, has only just realized. 

“I don’t say this often,” Lydia announces, killing the awkward lack of noise, “but you two are just...adorable.”

“I know, right?” Allison interjects, sipping from a glass of what is presumably wine that she must’ve poured in silence. 

“It’s not even eight, Allison,” Lydia complains, judgement in her voice. 

Allison doesn’t look even remotely affected. Instead, she offers the bottle to Lydia. “Come on, it’s Christmas.”

“True.” Lydia says, shrugging at the same time, taking the bottle and pouring a glass for herself. “You know what? This really makes me wanna watch _Love Actually_.”

“YES!” For the second time Derek almost jumps out of his seat, his heart somehow managing to withstand another blow. “I totally wanna watch that. Right now. I’m in the mood.”

“Are you sure?” Derek asks, because every time Stiles watches _Love Actually_ it sends him into some weird emotional catatonia. 

“What’s wrong, you think I can’t handle it, eh, big guy?” Stiles playfully nudges him in the arm, winks at him once, then multiple times in quick succession like his muscles are in spasm. Derek winks back just once to let him know that he noticed, and then they’re leaning into each other while Lydia returns to the room with the DVD, inserts it into the drive, then settles into a chair with a glass of wine and an open box of chocolates she’s just scooped up off of the floor. 

Just as Bill Nighy begins singing, Stiles leans closer to Derek, gets close to his ear, and softly whispers “you totally won Christmas this year, dude.”

Derek waits for a second then tilts his head to Stiles’ ear, his nose touching his earlobe, and whispers “are we keeping score now?” in reciprocation. 

Stiles’ mouth is at his ear again. “Totally,” he breathes, then pulls away. 

Derek laughs just a little to himself, pulls his legs onto the empty space on the sofa beside him, then rests his head on Stiles’ shoulder, the warmth of happiness flooding through his veins. 

Because yeah, he did win Christmas this year. And he’ll win next year, and the year after, for the rest of time, because he’s resting his head on the best gift he could ever get.

**Author's Note:**

> Sooo, if you'd like to follow me on Twitter or Tumblr for a mutual exchange of nonsensical flail-y messages about TV shows or just plain ol' butt tweets, then I'm here:
> 
> Twitter: @steosphere  
> Tumblr: this-makes-sense.tumblr.com


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